Campus

Most of MICA's campus sits between the Bolton Hill and Station North neighborhoods in north central Baltimore. On the Baltimore City page, you can get more information about the neighborhoods that surround MICA's campus. The campus itself is made up of almost 20 buildings--below, we've profiled the spaces most heavily used by our graduate community. Follow along on our campus map!

Fred Lazarus IV Center for Graduate Studies

The Fred Lazarus IV Center is currently home to all but 4 MICA graduate programs. Both the Offices of Graduate Studies and Admission are located on the first floor. The Fred Lazarus IV Center also houses important resources for the entire graduate community, including:

Fred Lazarus IV Center Woodshop: With the 2011 renovation of the Graduate Studio Center came the woodshop--the first onsite fabrication space in the new building.

Take a virtual tour of the facility affectionately referred to as The FLIV.

MICA PLACE

Located in East Baltimore, MICA PLACE is about 2 miles away from the center of MICA's campus and is home to the Community Arts MFA program's studios and seminar spaces. You can take a small look inside the building with this photo tour, but the historic St. Wenceslaus Church that became MICA PLACE is a space that should definitely be visited to be appreciated. In addition to Community Arts workspaces, MICA PLACE also offers apartment-style student housing.

Brown Center

One of the most distinctive buildings on MICA's campus, the Brown Center is home to several undergraduate departments and the fourth-floor studio offices of the Graphic Design MFA program.

Main Building

Directly across the street from the jagged, glowing and beautiful Brown Center sits the stately Main Building. The Main Building houses the President's Offices and Undergraduate Admission, but also drawing & painting studio classrooms on the upper floor and MICA's campus darkroom in the basement. Although administrated by the undergraduate Photography Department, MICA graduate students do have access to darkroom facilities. Photography Department Manger John McNeil is a 2011 alumnus of the Photographic & Electronic Media program.

Bunting Center

The Bunting Center has become a hub for many students services, including Financial Aid, Students Accounts, Postal Operation and Academic Advising. But Bunting is not all administrative and dreary: both the Decker Library and Media Resource Center are located on the first floor.

Community

MICA's graduate community has many layers, starting in your individual workspace and extending up through the city of Baltimore. At each level, there are different opportunities for engagement and involvement, depending on your individual interest. Each of MICA's 18 graduate programs is itself a small community of artists, educators, critics, curators, designers and creative professionals. Your classmates will become friends, mentors, critics and career advisers. Increasingly, through student and staff leadership, the larger graduate community of all programs has come into focus, sharing resources, tools, visiting artists & critics, exhibition space and programming.

The best way to feel out the community is to talk to currently enrolled students, since they live it every day. The Office of Graduate Admission is more than happy to connect you with students & alumni in your program or area of interest to help you feel out the graduate culture at MICA. You can also spy on the Office of Graduate Studies graduate community blog for information about what is going on right now at MICA.

In the meantime, here are a few brief profiles of community-driven events in MICA's graduate community:

GradEx:A student run committee dedicated to exhibiting graduate student work in gallery spaces around campus

Salon: A monthly art party that showcases graduate student artwork, research and projects that also invites local artists and graduate alumni

Graduate Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Each graduate program brings unique visitors, but their talks are open to the entire community, both full-time and low-residency

SVA Graduate Student Council: The core governing and advising body of the graduate community, dedicated to creating new opportunities for graduate students

Graduate Holiday Pie Party: Program versus program, student versus student in a raucous pie-baking battle royale--Photographic & Electronic Media's dynasty has begun to crumble under a 2014 challenge from Rinehart School of Sculpture. It is truly anyone's trophy this year.

Resources

This category is very, very broad--but we also understand that it is very, very important to your eventual decision about where to attend graduate school. Because the needs of individual students are so varied and so important to the Graduate Office staff, we generally recommend contacting the Office of Graduate Admission to learn more about access to and availability of the equipment and tools that are most important to you. We can connect you with students, technical staff and faculty that will help you determine how, when and if you have access to the resources that are most important to your work.

MICA graduate students enjoy broad access to resources all over campus, from the darkroom to ceramics to the printmaking facilities to fabrication shops. You will find that you have both graduate faculty and staff support for almost any resource you need to access. But it is important to note that graduate students bear significant individual responsibility when it comes to accessing resources outside your department or the graduate community in general. At graduate orientation in August, you'll have the opportunity to meet the faculty members that oversee the key resources on campus.

Current graduate students are the authority on how to get things done. As you make your decision, we encourage you to speak with students in your program to find out what equipment they use and what their experience has been. Even after you matriculate, your classmates will be invaluable advisers on the tips and tricks of making things happen. Additionally, each of MICA's graduate programs has a faculty director who will be a great advocate for your practice, whatever form it takes. The important thing is to maintain the same self-motivation and determination that have brought you this far: MICA's entire campus is a door on which opportunity is actively knocking!